I just got the ballot for the International Best-Dressed List Poll, as I do every year, just as baseball season is getting underway and the forsythia is raging. This competition is sponsored by Vanity Fair, and it's always interesting to scan their "suggestions for consideration" before voting. (And then I vote for write-ins, preferably "amateurs.") But in fact, the first thing I do annually is look at the list and think, Hmm, interesting, I'm not here. Then inevitably follows the Gee, what am I doing wrong? period. And is what I'm doing wrong sartorial, or social? Maybe it's not my clothes but the time I spelled Graydon Carter's name wrong. Graydon (there's no e in it) made the Hall of Fame himself in '98. I guess once you're in you can relax.
Now, a lot of the guys "suggested" are swell dressers, but are there other criteria at work? That's a matter that calls for extensive soul searching; but in the meantime I've been studying this list and questioning the assumptions I've been making for years about how a man should dress. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. Maybe I should concentrate on getting somebody rich or "in society" to adopt me. I tried to get Fred Pressman to do that years ago but it didn't work. Anyway, I'm going to really study this list and try to figure out where I've gone wrong.
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There are numerous actors, as usual, proposed for the Best-Dressed honor, and they would not be out of place on any best actors list. I assume that they represent the sartorial avant-garde; and so now I'm making a study of baseball caps, trying to determine which logos and shades might suitably replace my collection of fedoras, and whether I should replace my overcoats with a Brando-style Schott Perfecto jacket or a more modern racer style. I'm rethinking everything.
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